As I’ll explore in a later essay, the pandemic policy responses did not make sense if public health was the goal. If, however, hoarding authority and maximising resources to public health, while minimising the complexities of competence, were the functional goals, Covid-19 responses made perfect sense.
I am quite taken aback by the extent to which I've come to almost universally similar conclusions. I take such instances of convergent evolution as evidence that my perception is aligning well with reality. I would love to have a discussion with you at some point.
The writing initially struck me as a little bit disjointed, but this piece grew on me.
It was refreshing to see laid bare so many of the actual realities underlying the human condition that some expect me to just ignore.
Incentives matter, people have different inherent capabilities and desire which are stratified across all kinds of categories, bureaucracies do perpetuate themselves and thus attempt to increase their authority and scope, children are not adults, everyday systems of social life do reward and punish people based on what is valued this can be deranging.
As the Kling comment was mentioned in the heading of this article, I respond here:
Kling argues: "Could “men oppressing women” be described as networked social aggression rather than a conspiracy?" - I think Kling didn't get the point.
But, responding to this statement directly - a different more correct view could be that humans evolved genetically and culturally from our common ancestor with chimpanzee and bonobo (and gorilla, going further back). And it took long time, industrial revolution and society of plenty finally made it possible - materially and educationally - to get to the point when men and women could develop equality, because much less depends on physical strength - Leviathan sure helped, but it was not sufficient. The things improved so much that women could start feminist movement. And won all there was to win - in the West. The rest is the law enforcement issue. Tremendous evolution - from chimps we were (and to large extent still are in our cognitive adaptations) to 21st century, and the cultural part could catch up just recently, really couldn't any earlier - and still not everywhere - notwithstanding Helen's Rome and Greece earlier examples. Why don't we get real and consider ourselves the primates we are? Would knock off a bit of our arrogance of deluding ourselves as ideal beings capable of detaching ourselves from reality of material world and evolution that brought us here. And be happy how far we have gotten. Here we are.
Hurray, right? Well, no, cultural movements don't stop when they win.
This is another of our cognitive adaptations: we are evolved to primarily fight against something socially, not so much for something. The achieving of something comes almost as byproduct. Even when we think we fight for something, we primarily fighting people against it. Thus, when such social movement achieves its goal, people fighting the fight don't stop, they metastasize the movement and keep fighting. _______________
And thank you, this is an excellent new piece, that in a way also explains parts of the above.
Great essay, as usual! while reading the first few paragraphs where lorenzo writes about humans being viewed as sovereign choosers, i was reminded of this paper by nathan cofnas you did not cited, though it would make a perfect fit for this article. its called "coercive paternalism and the intelligence continuum", maybe its of interest to you:
Excellent stuff.
As I’ll explore in a later essay, the pandemic policy responses did not make sense if public health was the goal. If, however, hoarding authority and maximising resources to public health, while minimising the complexities of competence, were the functional goals, Covid-19 responses made perfect sense.
I look forward to reading that essay. Thanks!
I wonder whether Lorenzo could assemble these essays into a book. That would be a great thing to have.
I am quite taken aback by the extent to which I've come to almost universally similar conclusions. I take such instances of convergent evolution as evidence that my perception is aligning well with reality. I would love to have a discussion with you at some point.
The writing initially struck me as a little bit disjointed, but this piece grew on me.
It was refreshing to see laid bare so many of the actual realities underlying the human condition that some expect me to just ignore.
Incentives matter, people have different inherent capabilities and desire which are stratified across all kinds of categories, bureaucracies do perpetuate themselves and thus attempt to increase their authority and scope, children are not adults, everyday systems of social life do reward and punish people based on what is valued this can be deranging.
Looking forward to the next piece!
As the Kling comment was mentioned in the heading of this article, I respond here:
Kling argues: "Could “men oppressing women” be described as networked social aggression rather than a conspiracy?" - I think Kling didn't get the point.
But, responding to this statement directly - a different more correct view could be that humans evolved genetically and culturally from our common ancestor with chimpanzee and bonobo (and gorilla, going further back). And it took long time, industrial revolution and society of plenty finally made it possible - materially and educationally - to get to the point when men and women could develop equality, because much less depends on physical strength - Leviathan sure helped, but it was not sufficient. The things improved so much that women could start feminist movement. And won all there was to win - in the West. The rest is the law enforcement issue. Tremendous evolution - from chimps we were (and to large extent still are in our cognitive adaptations) to 21st century, and the cultural part could catch up just recently, really couldn't any earlier - and still not everywhere - notwithstanding Helen's Rome and Greece earlier examples. Why don't we get real and consider ourselves the primates we are? Would knock off a bit of our arrogance of deluding ourselves as ideal beings capable of detaching ourselves from reality of material world and evolution that brought us here. And be happy how far we have gotten. Here we are.
Hurray, right? Well, no, cultural movements don't stop when they win.
This is another of our cognitive adaptations: we are evolved to primarily fight against something socially, not so much for something. The achieving of something comes almost as byproduct. Even when we think we fight for something, we primarily fighting people against it. Thus, when such social movement achieves its goal, people fighting the fight don't stop, they metastasize the movement and keep fighting. _______________
And thank you, this is an excellent new piece, that in a way also explains parts of the above.
Great essay, as usual! while reading the first few paragraphs where lorenzo writes about humans being viewed as sovereign choosers, i was reminded of this paper by nathan cofnas you did not cited, though it would make a perfect fit for this article. its called "coercive paternalism and the intelligence continuum", maybe its of interest to you:
https://philpapers.org/archive/COFCPA.pdf